Can we soften the impacts of hosting the Olympic Games?

There are enormous environmental impacts to hosting the Olymoic Games. I discuss this in a Conversation article: Green and Gold can we soften the impacts?

Permanent Olympic site: interview with International Business Times

Interviewed by International Business Times about permanent site for the Summer Olympics. You can access the article here.

Stadium for 2004 Athens Games (Photo: John Rennie Short)

Stadium for 1896 Athens Games  (photo: John Rennie Short)

Permanent site for Olympic Games: radio interview

Interviewed on Tim Denis radio show about permanent site for Olympics. Access the broadcast here

A permanent site for the Summer Olympics

The Summer Olympics should be held in the same place. I have been making this point for some time. I was asked recently by the Washington Post to write an article on this topic. You can access it here. An Atlantic piece published in 2013 written by Nate Berg, makes the same point.

My writings on the Summer Olympics are in various books as well as in the following articles:

Megaevents and urban spectaculars

Who won the 2016 Olympic Games hosting competition:  Rio or Chicago

Cities and the Olympics Games

Cities are rare good news story in climate change

My article on cities as the rare good news story in the issue of climate change was just published. You can access it here.

Chicago City Hall

Living in the Age of Distraction

We live in an Age of Distraction. People are multitasking and loosing focus on the here and now. I address this issue in a recent piece in The Conversation. You can access it here. 

Citizen attitudes in Cali Colombia

Our paper on citizen satisfaction levels in Cali, Colombia is just published. I am coauthor along with Lina Martinez and Marianella Ortiz of the Urban Observatory at ICESI University in Cali. You can access the paper here for free, at least for a while. Here is the abstract and the final paragraph. 

The Abstract

We present data from a recent survey of residents' satisfaction levels with a range of urban public goods and government performance in Cali, Colombia. The more affluent report higher levels of satisfaction, especially with regard to security, public space, utilities and government performance, compared to the poor. The low scoring on satisfaction with civic norms and government performance, especially amongst the poor, undermines the notion of an aspirations paradox, suggests a lack of social capital and distrust of government, and indicates a social capital deficit.

Final paragraph

Achieving a more just and fair city requires fashioning more redistributional programs directly concerned with improving security, enhancing the efficacy of government performance, raising the quality of public space and the amount of social capital. All of these goals need to be pursued actively for the poor and the poorest areas in the city, if we are serious about creating a more just, humane and fair city.

Gated home in Cali Colombia (Photo © John Rennie Short)